Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to gloves and, more particularly, to supported gloves comprising a knitted liner and a thin polymeric coating having enhanced abrasion resistance and methods of fabricating supported gloves having a thin polymeric coating.
Description of the Related Art
Gloves are used in many industries, such as construction, industrial, and other industries, as well as households, to protect the hands of users. Many such gloves comprise a fabric liner and a rubber material disposed thereon as a coating. However, although these gloves offer some protection, such gloves are not particularly flexible, which tire the hands of wearers during use and particularly extended use, causing repetitive motion injuries and other accidents due to hand fatigue. Moreover, gloves made with rubbers are often over-engineered, i.e., thicker liners and thicker coatings, to provide adequate physical properties, further decreasing comfort and flexibility. Also, it is difficult to adhere rubber coatings to a fabric liner and even more difficult to adhere thin rubber coatings to a fabric liner without strike-through, i.e., where the rubber extends from one surface of the fabric liner to the other surface of the fabric liner, undesirably contacting the hands of a wearer during use.
Therefore, the inventors have invented thin, abrasion resistant, supported gloves, and processes capable of fabricating thin, abrasion resistant, supported gloves.